Off to Be the Wizard - 2 - Spell or High Water (17 page)

16.

The heat was unbearable.

Agent Miller tried to get his mind off of the heat by focusing on the noise, which was deafening.

After a few minutes of this, he tried to distract himself from the noise by focusing on his motion sickness, which threatened to make him throw up at any moment. In an effort to
alleviate this
he crawled closer to the open door of the unrefrigerated
boxcar
in which he was riding.
Maybe if I look at the horizon, I won’t be sick. That’s supposed to help. Besides, it’s cooler there because of
the win
d.

He crawled as close to the door as he dared. Close enough to feel that the wind was still unnervingly strong and gusty, and
to se
e that the train was still cutting along the side of a mountain, so that the door of the boxcar opened to a life-ending drop. Not a straight drop. There was a painful-looking gravel berm just wide enough for him to bounce off before he fell over the side to his certain death. His innate fear of heights, and his lack of any decent footing, drove Agent Miller clambering back into the dark corner of the boxcar where it was safe, hot, and loud.

“I hate this,” he shouted.

“What?” Jimmy shouted back. It would have been hard enough to hear each other if they had only had the train noise to contend with, but because of Jimmy’s weird effect on
electronic
devices, they’d had to find a train going from Seattle to Los
Angeles
that had three non-refrigerated boxcars in a row that weren’t transporting any sort of electronic devices, and in which the middle car had room for three adults to live for the three days the trip was going to take. That left them with a field of one car to choose from, this car, which was transporting tens of
thousands
of squeaky, bone-shaped rubber dog toys,
manufactured
in China, shipped by freighter to Seattle, now headed to a big box pet supply chain’s distribution center in southern California.

For now the squeaky bones were held in large cardboard boxes that completely filled the interior of the box car to a depth of six feet, leaving them four feet of living space on the top. Not that they could stand on the loosely packed boxes anyway.

The agents and their charge had taped several of the boxes to each other and to the walls so that they could have the door of the boxcar open a bit and not be worried about the cargo falling out unexpectedly and taking one or all of them with it. Still, the three men had to live in a moving, rattling, cacophonous metal box, while lying, sitting, crawling, and involuntarily bouncing on a bed of cardboard and thousands of squeaky toys. The din was constant, but not consistent enough to become white noise. Any bump or shimmy on the part of the train, or shift in weight on the part of the men inside the car, caused a spike in the volume of the squeaking.

Miller envied his partner, Agent Murphy. At least he had a means of taking an occasional break. Twice a day they had to check in with their supervisor, but cell phones didn’t work if they were too close to Jimmy and his magnetic field. Being trapped inside a steel box with him didn’t make the cell phone work any better, so in order to check in, all Agent Murphy (who had no fear of heights, unlike Agent Miller) had to do was swing himself out of the open door of the shaking boxcar, grab the ladder that was just within reach, climb up to the roof of the moving train, and make his way far enough away from Jimmy that his phone would work. This meant walking toward the back of the train and jumping to the next boxcar back. Two cars in front of them was an open bin of some foul-smelling material Miller suspected was used in the manufacture of fertilizer.

Miller carefully crawled toward Jimmy, who was lying back on several partially mashed, squeaking boxes as if they were a deluxe bed in the most expensive suite at the finest hotel. Jimmy was wearing his suit pants and a Seattle PD T-shirt. He had his suit jacket folded and tucked under his head like a pillow.

It took great care to move around, not only because the unreliability of the surface made it hard to find footing, but also because it was very easy to carelessly put your weight on one of the seams between the boxes of squeaky toys, meaning that you could be crawling along without a care in the world, then trust your weight to the wrong spot and instantly find yourself falling head first between the boxes all the way down to the splintery plywood floor. If that happened, you’d have to crawl your way up, like a man buried alive, to the surface of your squeaking, cardboard-scented grave.

Miller finally reached Jimmy. He put his head right up to Jimmy’s ear and shouted, “I hate this!”

Jimmy smiled and shouted back, “I know!”

“How can you look so happy?” Miller asked.

“Try being a middle-aged white man, riding a bicycle through Nicaragua. This is luxury.”

Agent Miller put his mouth right up to Jimmy’s ear and yelled, “I feel like I’m going to be sick!”

Jimmy replied, “Please don’t do it while shouting in my ear.”

Miller said, “I should be so lucky,” and carefully slunk back to his corner of the boxcar. He could have stayed where he was, next to Jimmy, but the fact was he wanted as much distance between them as possible. Miller had begun to regret having ever laid eyes on the old coot.

Miller thought back to his life before meeting Jimmy. He was half of a two-man task force, assigned to investigate and
possibly
solve a series of possibly connected impossible occurrences that were possibly crimes. They had spent years chasing
promising
leads and had always come up empty-handed. At the time it was frustrating, but in retrospect seemed like some kind of golden age. They never enjoyed returning to their office empty handed, but now they were returning home with their hands full of Jimmy, and it was just as unsavory as it sounded.

Their original plan was to stay in Seattle. They would
question
Jimmy and decide if he was a crackpot or if he was on the level. Either way they’d get the information they needed and get back to Los Angeles, tout suite. Unfortunately, Jimmy proved to be both a crackpot and on the level, and instead of just answering their questions, he needed to demonstrate his point, and he had a whole list of weird household items he needed before he could stage his demonstration.

It was like trying to interrogate Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Most of the items on the list had been easy. Things like kite string, binoculars, a large scented candle—things you could get at any department store. The problem had been the last item: a room at least forty feet in length with a clear line of sight. The
Seattle
Police Department had no such room in their
headquarters
, or at least had none that they were willing to hand over to Miller and Murphy. The SPD had started to tire of the two Treasury agents, their weird informant, and the rash of unexplained electronic malfunctions that followed him wherever he went.

Murphy had tried to find another facility in Seattle that met Jimmy’s specifications, but they all suffered from the same flaw: they cost money to rent, and there was no way the
Treasury
Department was going to spend money when it had several
storage
facilities and garages in Los Angeles. Murphy pointed out that transporting Jimmy to California would cost money, but their supervisor pointed out that it would actually be pretty cheap, since, as Murphy himself said, taking an airline flight home was impossible anyway.

They quickly researched several possible ways to get Jimmy to L.A. without his magnetic field killing anyone. They considered renting the biggest truck they could and having him ride in the back, but his field would affect any car that tried to pass. They tried to talk their supervisor into renting an antique airplane, but any modern avionics would be useless, risking their safety, and worse, it would cost money. In the end, the boxcar was the only option. Since it is not actually legal to transport humans in a boxcar for any price, the agents had to sneak onto the train with Jimmy, and were now officially hobos, which cost nothing but their dignity, the one resource the Treasury Department was happy to squander with wild abandon.

Murphy and Miller found a train that suited their purpose, then happily checked out of their room at the cheapest hotel in the SeaTac Airport district. Their boss had gotten a substantial discount by renting their room on a nightly basis, instead of the usual hourly rate plan. They then had to transport Jimmy from the police headquarters to the rail yard, and they couldn’t use any car that employed an integrated circuit, because Jimmy would render it inoperable. In the end, an officer was able to loan them his early-seventies Cadillac, which was barely operable to begin with. They transported Jimmy in the dead of night to minimize any effect he might have on traffic. The stealthy, cloak-and-dagger feel of the operation was spoiled by the Cadillac’s faulty wiring, which caused the horn to honk in time with the left turn signal.

Agent Miller leaned back into the boxes and a miasma of self-pity.
Maybe if I lie on my back,
he thought,
I’ll fall asleep, then throw up, and aspirate on my own sick. Then my body will slide between these cursed boxes and slowly sink down into squeaky oblivion.

He fantasized about this for a while, then his backbone
reasserted
itself.
No,
he thought,
without me here, Murphy will just be kind to Jimmy, and I can’t allow that to happen, not after all of this.

Miller forced himself to look out the door of the train. He watched the world pass, fast enough to keep him motion sick, but slow enough to give him no hope of arriving at his
destination
any time soon. After a few moments, he saw a single hand swing in from beyond the door and clutch at its frame, knuckles white with exertion. Miller and Jimmy both scrambled as quickly
as th
ey dared toward the door. They had been
traveling
for nearly two days. This was the fourth time Murphy had made the
transition
from clinging to the side of the car to sitting inside, and it had already become routine. It was still utterly terrifying for everyone involved, but the terror was part of the routine, just one more item on the checklist.

Jimmy braced his legs on one side of the doorframe. Miller braced against the door itself. Murphy’s second hand joined his first on the edge of the opening, then the very top of his head appeared. He was now standing on the floor of the boxcar, but would not be able to climb up on the stack of boxes without help. Jimmy took one hand, Miller took the other, and with much
pulling
, kicking, and cursing, he was pulled up onto the surface like a landed fish.

“What’s the news?” Miller shouted.

Murphy lay there, panting from the exertion and the stress. Between gulps of air he yelled, “They have a facility set aside for us, and suitable transportation will be waiting at the rail yard’s employee parking lot. All we have to do is wait for the cover of darkness, then sneak out past the railroad dicks.”

“Excellent,” Jimmy said. “This is great news. Smile,
gentlemen
. Things are going well!”

That was the last straw. Miller shrieked, “Going well?! I’m sick, I haven’t slept more than a couple of hours in two days, and Murph is having to risk his life twice a day to talk to
someone
that we both avoid when we’re in the same building as him. Then, to top it all off, we just found out that we’re going to have to slink into the city where we both live like criminals!”

“Yes,” Jimmy said. “Isn’t it exciting?”

Miller looked at Jimmy, who beamed at him. He looked at Murphy, who shrugged, as if to say
Well, he’s got a point.
Miller considered yelling at them both some more, but instead he
simply
relaxed and allowed himself to fall between the boxes, down to the bottom of the squeaking cardboard crevasse. There, he hoped to find some peace.

17.

Phillip’s trip to meet with Brit the Elder was actually rather
pleasant
. Once he realized that neither of the guards escorting him had any idea why she wanted to see him, their
conversation
turned to a more pleasant subject: Martin. Ampyx spent the entire trip asking Phillip pointed questions about Martin,
questions
Phillip was happy to answer.

“He’s impulsive,” Phillip said. “He acts without thinking. He makes the same mistakes over and over and when he finally does learn his lesson, he often forgets it within a few hours.”

“He sounds irritating,” Ampyx said.

“Oh yes! He’ll irritate you.”

“You don’t seem to like him much.”

“On the contrary, he’s quickly become my best friend,”
Phillip said.

“If he’s irritating and stupid, why be friends with him?”

“Oh, he’s not stupid, just a slow learner. Stupid people are useless. Slow learners are tremendous fun to jerk around.”

Finally, they arrived at Brit the Elder’s patio, where he had first arrived in Atlantis just the day before. There was a table, two chairs, two empty glasses, and a pitcher of some refreshing-looking reddish drink. The two guards took their leave of Phillip, telling him that Brit the Elder would be with him shortly.

Phillip walked to the railing and looked up at the city. It was getting close to evening. Due to the unique bowl-like shape of Atlantis, most of the city was in shadow. Only one part of the city still had direct sunlight, a small crescent along the far upper rim. The darkness of the rest of town made it stand out even more. The sky was a brilliant blue disk overhead, and the city was dark and cool. Lights were slowly beginning to come on, just a few for now, but with each passing moment there were more, and as they did, the buildings themselves glowed. You could see light and shadow moving within the buildings, not so well that you could tell what was happening, but enough to let you know that something was going on, and that it seemed pleasant.

Phillip wondered about the lights. He knew that his
quarters
had artificial lights. Brit’s did as well. He knew that the vast
majority
of the people who lived in Atlantis didn’t have the
powers
that he and his magical/time-traveling kind did. He
wondered
if they used candles, oil lamps, or some other lighting method he didn’t know about.

Phillip was startled when a voice behind him said, “
Magical
.” He jumped then spun around to see Brit the Elder standing behind him. He still couldn’t get used to it. She had the same face. The same glasses. The hairstyle was different, but the hair color was the same.

“The lights,” Brit clarified. “They’re magical. Computer generated, if you prefer to call it that.” She walked to the
railing
, standing closer to Phillip than he was comfortable with. He was happy to have her stand that close, which is what made him uncomfortable. “Of course,” Brit continued, “all of their methods of creating light before I got here were variations on the theme of ‘burning something.’ It’s really dangerous and wasteful when you think about it. Instead, I set up light sources. You make a light. Make a switch. Tell the system that one controls the other. You know how it works. You used the same basic technique to make the lights in your rumpus room.”

Phillip looked down at her. “You know about my rumpus room?”

Brit replied, “Phillip, I’ve ridden in your Fiero.”

Phillip noticed that she had the same smile as Brit the Younger as well.

“Anyway, when people move to Atlantis, part of the bargain is that they get free light, heat, and garbage and waste removal. It’s funny. I became a time traveler and a sorceress just to end up going into the utilities business.”

“So, all of the city’s necessary functions are handled by magic,” Phillip said. “That answers a lot of my questions, but don’t the locals want to know how things work?”

“Did the modern people we left behind?”

Phillip said, “Yes, they did. The libraries were full of books about how every single thing in the world worked.”

Brit took Phillip by the arm and led him across the patio to the table. She did it so smoothly that he didn’t even notice it was happening until they were almost there.

“Yes, that’s true,” Brit said, “but how many people actually read those books? How many know how to rewire a lamp, or fix their own toilet?”

They reached the table. Brit poured two glasses of whatever the reddish drink was and they both had a seat. Brit continued, “People say that they want to know how things work, but really, most of them just want to know why things work.”

“Why they work?” Phillip asked.

“Yes,” Brit said. “You know, ‘I flip the switch and the lamp turns on because of electricity.’ Or, ‘I put gas in the car, it burns, and the car moves.’ Or, ‘I press this thingy, that thingy lights up because Brit made it work with magic.’ It’s all the same to them. Please, have a drink.”

Brit took a long drink from her glass. Phillip followed suit. “What is this?” he asked.

“Hi-C. I’ve loved the stuff ever since I was a kid.” Brit took another appreciative drink, the spent a moment silently studying Phillip. Finally she asked, “How’d you like the giant squid?”

Phillip was surprised. Then he was surprised at himself for being surprised. “The squid was amazing,” he said. “I could have done without the swim afterwards though.”

“Yes,” Brit agreed, “not a pleasant way to end the trip, but still, memorable.”

“Clearly, since you seem to remember it,” Phillip said.

Every time Phillip thought Brit’s smile was as bright as it could be, it found a way to get a bit brighter. “Yes, I remember it well. I only took you to see the coral reef because it seemed like a nice, touristy kind of thing to show you. I was happy when it bored you. Your reaction to the squid made me even happier. It was good of you to listening to my whining. Sorry about that.”

Phillip bristled a bit. “I wouldn’t call it whining. Brit the Younger has some legitimate complaints.”

Brit the elder shook her head. “Phillip, there’s no need to defend me to me. I know exactly what my complaints were. I made some good points. It certainly wasn’t easy being Brit the Younger, but it’s not really easy being anybody, is it? She thinks it’s hard being her, but she hasn’t tried being me yet.”

“You think you have it harder than she does?” Phillip asked.

“Not harder, just differently hard. You’re what, forty years old physically, fifty or so chronologically?”

“Yes.

“Well, Brit the Younger and I are both twenty-eight
physically
. She’s thirty-nine chronologically. I am 167. She’s a little over a quarter my age. Think back to what you were like when you were thirteen.”

Phillip thought about it. It was not pleasant.

“No need to tell me what you were like,” Brit said. “The
grimace
on your face says it all. Now, imagine spending the next fifty years of your life living with you at age thirteen, or, to be fair, let’s make it twenty. Imagine watching twenty-year-old
Phil the Younger
live the life you led, express the opinions that now make you wince, make the mistakes you remember painfully. Now imagine that you cannot, under any circumstances
interfere
, because you know those experiences will make him the person he needs to become.”

“You.”

“Well,
you
in this example, but you’re right, I am talking about me.”

Phillip thought for a moment, then said, “You make a good point, but that doesn’t excuse all of your behavior. You’re taking credit for her ideas.”

“I’m her. They’re my ideas, too, and when I get credit for them, she gets it as well.”

“It doesn’t feel that way to her.”

Brit stood up. “Not yet, but it will.” She offered her hand. “Please come with me, Phillip. There’s something I’d like to
show you.”

Phillip stood up, and again, Brit the Elder deftly took him by the arm and led him, this time down the steps of the patio and into the park that made up the center of the city. The sliver of the bowl that was still receiving direct sunlight was bathed in the orange glow that told Phillip it was sunset. The reflected light gave the rest of the city a golden aura. Even more of the city’s lights had come on, making the entire panorama surrounding them look like a patchwork quilt made out of light. The path through the park was lined with lights, but rather than being hung from poles, they were simply balls of pure white light
suspended
in space, casting a glow on the path beneath.

As they walked, Phillip said, “If you remember our trip to see the squid—”

Brit looked up at him and interrupted, “Like it was
yesterday
.”

“It was today,” Phillip said. “Anyway, then you’ll remember my theory.”

Phillip expected that to sour her mood, but it did not. She said, “You mean that I am not actually me?” She let that hang in the air for a moment before correcting herself, “Her, I mean.”

“Yes,” Phillip said. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me that I’m totally wrong.”

“No, Phillip. You’re not totally wrong. I think you’re about fifty percent wrong.”

Phillip said, “Well, that’s not so bad, I guess.”

Brit said, “I know that I . . .
she
told you how things happened from
her
point of view. Let me tell you how they happened from mine. I’ll make it quick, because most of it will sound familiar. I decided to come to Atlantis. I did some research, picked a time and place, and thought, ‘If it isn’t there already, I can always jump further back and build it myself.’ Then I made the jump, and the city, much as you see it now, was here waiting for me, along with a woman who claimed to be me but older.”

Phillip said, “But logically, if you built Atlantis, it can’t have been here when you got here.”

Brit reached up and poked Phillip’s nose. “Exactly. I think you’re right, Phillip. I think the program did pause reality and did create an avatar of me that found no Atlantis here, then went back in time and built it according to how it knew I would. Then, when it got back to the point where I turned up, it restarted
reality
so I could experience it firsthand.”

Phillip said, “But then, after fifty years you go back in time to do what, make Atlantis again?”

“No, I make Atlantis for the first time, exactly as the projection of me did before. The program knew exactly what I would do when it built it the first time. It’s no surprise that when it was my turn I did exactly the same thing.”

“Interesting,” Phillip said, “but still, how can you prove that you’re really you and not a simulated you?”

“I can’t. All I can tell you is that I am absolutely certain that I am me, that I used to be her, and that I know everything that has happened to us in the intervening time while she becomes me.”

“Of course, that’s exactly what a projection of you would say as well.”

Brit looked up at Phillip. “Do I look like a computer projection to you?”

“Yes, but everybody does, because we both know that that’s what we are.”

Brit squeezed his arm and said, “Touché.”

They walked on in silence for a few moments. Phillip saw that they were walking toward the monument that stood in the middle of the park. It was a polished white spire that rose from the center of the park, which was itself the center of the city. It gave the impression of being the spindle around which the city revolved. Phillip asked Brit the Elder where they were going.

“Exactly where it looks like we’re going,” she said. “Philip, I owe you an apology. I’ve misled you. A long time ago, earlier today to you, I told you that I . . .
me
, was taking credit for my . . .
her
, ideas. There’s some truth to that, but what I didn’t say at the time was that I only really had two ideas.”

“What?” Phillip said, stopping in his tracks. “You built this entire city. I mean, Brit the Younger’s point is that she had all of the ideas that you built the city with, and that you got the credit for it. Are you telling me that you built this place with only two ideas?”

Brit laughed pleasantly and started leading Phillip forward again. “No, not at all. It took hundreds of ideas to make this place work. All I’m saying is at the time that I transported back to this time in the first place, I had only had two of them:
fabricating
objects one atom at a time using automated algorithms, and using those objects to create complex mechanisms with few or no actual moving parts. I liked the simplicity of it. It felt very Charles Eames to me. Anyway, I got here and the city was already built, so I just took notice of how everything worked. Later, when I went back in time and started building, I realized how many details there were, and how many problems needed to be solved, so I had to fall back on the things I remembered from when I was Brit the Younger.”

“Are you’re saying that the ideas just sort of spontaneously happened, and thanks to the loop in your time line it’s impossible to know which of you came up with them?” Phillip asked.

“No,” Brit said, and stopped walking. “I know exactly who came up with the ideas.” They were directly in front of the
obelisk
now. At its base there was a squared section, covered with engraved writing. Brit let go of Phillip’s arm, gestured toward the monument, and said, “Go read what it says.”

Phillip walked toward the monument, eventually getting close enough to make it out. It read, “The city of Atlantis would neither exist nor function without the contributions of the
following
people.” Beneath that were a great many names, listed in alphabetical order. Phillip scanned the list. He, Martin, and Gwen were all listed, as were Jeff and, strangely, Jeff’s trainee Roy. As he read, Brit walked up beside him.

“When I first got here and saw this list, I figured it was just people who had been supportive, or offered the occasional bit of advice. It wasn’t until I actually started building the place that I realized these are all people from whom I copied some idea, some bit of code, some functioning idea, and incorporated it into the city.”